Episode 29 – How to get your dream SECOND job as a software developer

In episode 29 of Mentoring Developers, special guest, Sara Ines Calderon is back to explore the many ways to get noticed and land that job you’ve been dreaming of. So, get ready, get set, and give a listen in as Arsalan and Sara tell all.
Sara’s Bio:
Sara Inés Calderón is a journalist and writer who lives in Texas and California. Follow her on Twitter @SaraChicaD.
Episode Highlights and Show Notes:
Arsalan: today, I have a very special guest, someone you’ve heard before if you went to listen to episode 18 at mentoring developers.com/episode 18. You would’ve heard my interview with Sara Ines Calderon. Sara is a new developer, but back when I interviewed her she had gotten her first job. Now she has moved into her second job, which is a better job. It pays better. It’s better suited and overall causes her to be happier. Is that true Sara?
Sara: Yes, I just finished my first week at this new job, but there’s definitely more levels of better than the first programming job, which from what I understand is how tech jobs go.
Arsalan: So, who are you? I think that our audience may have forgotten who you are. Please tell us a little bit about yourself. Who is Sara?
Sara: I am Sara. I have actually transitioned in technology after working 10 years in the media, which ranges from newspapers to digital blog publications as well as a few media startups and doing social media, analytics, and things like that. Then I transferred through these Sabio, a boot camp in Los Angeles that focuses on diversity in tech. I became a .net developer there.
Sara: Then I moved to Austin and became a co-director of women who code Austin. Here, we do a lot of work around diversity, specifically gender diversity, but also ethnic diversity and LGBT diversity and a variety of things. So, that’s kind of what I do and who I do it through. Most recently, as you mentioned, I got my second tech job and this is my first week in that position. So, it’s kind of a new adventure and the next step in here we are.
Arsalan: In a very short amount of time, when did you start thinking about becoming a programmer or software developer? How long has it been?
Sara: The last startup at which I worked was a YouTube network and I started tinkering around with some of the backend interfaces on the YouTube platform and I started to realize that there was a lot of things going on there that I was curious about if I had that domain knowledge. I think in that particular startup, that kind of technical knowledge was going to allow me to grow professional in a way that I desired and wanted and in a way that having content knowledge never would have allowed me to. That was around 2011 or 2012 when I started actually thinking about moving into a more technical role. I didn’t actually get around to it until 2014, but here we are.
Arsalan: So, from 2014 to 2016, a short two year period, you were able to make this decision to go into software development. Not only that, you learned a little bit on your own and then you went to a code camp for a few weeks, right?
Sara: it was a 12-week program, so three months.
Arsalan: So, it’s a really short time to start a career. Then you got your first job and I’m sure you had to go through a lot of interviews and it’s not really that easy to get your first job and you can’t be that picky. Most of the time, if you’re a new developer, you just have to get a job, any job and a lot of times people work for free. Most of the time and are industry we are lucky enough that we don’t have to do that because the budgets are often large and companies are able to pay you, and they will pay you even if you intern.
Arsalan: If you work full time, then they will pay you something that is decent and compared to scale, even if it is lesser than your peers. It’s still okay to start, but very soon you’ll realize that’s not really what you want to do, or maybe it’s the people,

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